


At the Moon of Madness

by inthegrayworld



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Because Mind Control, Dark, F/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Reylo - Freeform, Reylo Baby, eldritch horror, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-01 23:56:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20551952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegrayworld/pseuds/inthegrayworld
Summary: For Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Amid Secrets and Monsters collection. My chosen theme being 'eldritch horror'.Rey receives a strange, garbled message from Kylo Ren, asking for her help. He's stranded on the Moon of Anroth, where stories whisper of a strange presence that drives people insane...





	At the Moon of Madness

At the Moon of Madness

  


i

The transmission is garbled and weak. It comes in on the emergency channel, but is encrypted specifically for the Millennium Falcon’s receivers.

Rey reviews the footage for the third time.

The holographic figure is stooped over, hands clutching at the elbows, hair strewn across the face. But there is no mistaking his voice, even behind the hiss of static.

_ “—Attacked—everyone dead—“ _

The sensible thing would be to send the message to the Resistance. Send a reconnaissance team. Tell them that Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is on his own and defenseless.

_ “Moon of Anroth—the mountain—“ _

A quick check of the sender’s coordinates did pinpoint it to a mountain on the Moon of Anroth, but the name created a nervous buzz at the back of Rey’s mind. 

It is whispered about in the shadowy corners of cantinas, among the more widely-travelled soldiers of both the First Order and the Resistance, in legends told by the tribes of the more feral worlds dotting the Outer Rim. Anroth itself, the stories go, is your run-of-the-mill agricultural planet. But its moon, bright and skeletal white, is cursed. All agree that anyone who stares at the moon, too deeply and for too long, on the nights it waxes full, goes insane.

Rey watches Kylo Ren, eyes wide and furtive, sentences dropping off, and wonders if he’s gone mad as well.

_ “Couldn’t contact—days—” _

The list of questions grows more convoluted. Who attacked them? Why? Why not ask help from the First Order? Why her?

_ “Don’t know how long—there is something here—watching—“ _

What in the galaxy could possibly reduce him to that state_ — _ weak, frightened, asking _ her _ for aid? It could be a trap. It is almost certainly a trap.

“Help me, Rey,” he says. “You’re my only hope.”

She swallows, finds the decision is not all that difficult to make.

  


ii

On the Moon of Anroth is a snowy mountain, and in the mountain, a cave, and in the cave, a chamber where the priests used to meet in secret. In the chamber is a throne carved of stone, and by its base, a circle etched into the floor, a deeper black than the walls, than the shadows cast by a flickering orb light.

Kylo Ren avoids the circle. He feels safest in the light cast by the orb, the standard-issue emergency light from his crash kit. The kit bag has been torn open. Rations and medpacs are scattered on the floor.

Somewhere far away, the wind howls, and the cold of the blizzard outside touches the back of his neck. He shudders, and steps into the orb’s light, but he knows that safety is an illusion.

Just as the figure at the other end of the chamber is an illusion.

It looks a lot like his grandfather_ — _same towering form, same cape. The mask is how it looked like before being burned, a dangerous sheen coming off its curves and edges. It breathes heavily through the respirator, but there is another sound behind the exhalation, one that makes the hairs on Kylo’s arms stand. It sounds wet, and hungry.

The thing in the cave, wearing his grandfather’s form, takes a step forward. Kylo winces.

“Back,” he hisses.

But he knows it won’t step back. It didn’t last time. Or any of the other times before.

“You sent the message,” it says.

“I—” He may have. He isn’t sure. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. For all he can tell, he’s never known anything else but the chamber, and the circle, and the throne, and the figure in his grandfather’s armor.

But he sees the comm in his hand. He’d been clutching it tightly.

“You have,” it says. “She will come.”

From somewhere deep within him, Kylo finds the last dredges of a fight.

“You are wrong,” he sneers. “She is far wiser than she seems. She won’t fall for such a—such an obvious trap.”

It was at the other end of the room, but Kylo blinks and all of a sudden it stands before him, close enough that he smells rancid meat emanating from its mask.

“No,” it agrees with him. “But she will come.”

“She won’t—”

“She will. She will not abandon you.”

Kylo turns away from the monstrosity. “She should.”

The thing in Vader’s form cocks its head. 

“That is what you say, but that is not what you want. This girl. What doubt she awakens in you.”

A few days back, he still had the strength to argue. That strength is gone.

“And when she arrives…” It grabs him by the jaw, forcing him to look up. 

The strength in that hand does not belong on a man. Not even in the half machine that Darth Vader had been. When it grabs Kylo’s face, he feels his entire body in the grasp of something far more powerful, far older, something that seems to bind him where he stands with long, looping tentacles, as though a beast from the deep ocean.

Looking up at the mask, he sees that it only barely stays in place. There is a roiling underneath it, something squirming, almost visible past the respirator’s teeth.

Kylo does not remember ever being this afraid.

“When she arrives, you will take her,” it says.

For a moment, the fear vanishes.

“No,” he says.

The grip around him tightens.

“You will take her,” it says, the roiling growing violent under the mask. “Is that not what you want? You desire her.”

He feels a twinge from deep within him, but he refuses to answer.

“I will not,” he says instead.

The thing’s anger strikes like a lightning flash. For a second, the room is alive with the writhing of tendrils that grow from the walls, stretching down from the ceiling. Kylo shuts his eyes. When he opens them, it is only Vader before him.

“I will not,” Kylo whispers. “I would rather die.”

The thing, ancient and powerful, recognizes in the mewling boy a diamond hard resolve. Stupid, small, stubborn, flesh puppet. 

But it has waited ten thousand years, past the veil of the Moon of Anroth. It is near enough to this plane of existence to taste it, and the minds and fears of the countless beings that live in it. But at the same time, it is so far away, that it can only press so much of its influence on those that dare travel to the Moon. That the flesh puppet did not immediately go mad upon feeling its touch was already a boon. 

It lets him drop to the floor, gasping for breath. It will not wait another ten thousand years to find a vessel.

Kylo makes a wild grab for his lightsaber, but a tendril of shadow casually flicks it across the floor. He collapses in exhaustion, fingers touching the edge of the circle.

The figure has returned to its place past the circle and the throne. It makes the cosmic version of a shrug.

“Then you will have to court her.”

  


iii

It is not an easy climb. The wind picks up as the temperature drops. There is no path, just a series of icy moss-covered rocks, and it takes the majority of her concentration to find handholds. Snowflakes fly into her face, and she spits them out, cursing the sky, the mountain, herself. She does not stop, not even to take a break. If she does, she will begin questioning why she’s even here, and she knows in her gut that she’d rather face the mountain ten times over than the answer to those questions.

Where the ground levels out, Rey finds herself stopping, shocked. The snow has fallen thickly, making grotesque ice sculptures of the bodies strewn on the ground. She sees stormtroopers, some of them in pieces. An arm here, a leg there, between the wreckage of speeders. It’s hard to tell how long the bodies have lain there, or what caused them to end up like that.

Rey has seen many battlefields before—they don’t look like this. She could imagine the First Order attempting to set up camp here, before someone—something—did this. A pack of wampa probably. She finds herself hoping that was what it was—something she’d understand, and be able to explain. If not…

Her heart quickens. Above the scene of the massacre is the cave mouth.

In the cave is a tunnel that Rey follows, one hand on her saber hilt. The stories return to her now. Some say that the Moon of Anroth is the eye of a long-dead god, not one of the more benevolent ones. Others say that somewhere on the moon is a gateway that opens into hell. Rey purposely quickens her steps, trying to brush off the chill that has taken root at the base of her spine, that has nothing to do with the cold.

Up ahead is a light. 

Rey slows down, suddenly aware of how loudly she’s been breathing through her teeth. She’s afraid, she realizes. But this isn’t the fear that comes before a fight—she knows that well enough (and if she’s to be honest with herself, there’s exhilaration in there too). But this is different—a heart-thudding, gut-squeezing fear, of whatever might be inside that chamber.

She forces herself to remain calm, to breathe. All the same, she ignites her saber, the fierce blue splitting the dark.

Inside the chamber is warmth. Soft, flame-colored light comes from an orb on the floor.

This surprises her.

He’s sitting on some kind of throne, slumped over, hair dragged in front of his face. His robe is bedraggled, the inner shirt peeking out. He looks like he’s been sitting there for years.

But when he looks up and sees her, his eyes widen. He stands up, palms open towards her. She’s never seen that look on his face before—the closest to it she’s ever seen was when they were in the elevator together, in the Supremacy. This is the look he gave her then, in full blossom.

“Rey,” he says.

The saber in her hand powers down.

“Ben.”

He rushes towards her—that’s something she’s never seen before either. An effusive, almost aggressive openness. He looks like he might hug her, and she does not know what she’d do if he does.

“You did come,” he says, coming to a halt a respectful distance away. He looks—

“I did,” she mumbles. “You were. Um. You said you were in trouble.”

He looks happy. So happy. She feels a squeezing inside her ribs.

“I wasn’t sure you would,” he says. In the glow lamp’s light, she can see how gaunt he’s gotten. How long has it been since she’s seen his face? Not the mask—she sees that enough, in the holos, in First Order propaganda, in recon footage. He hasn’t slept or eaten in a while. But his eyes burn with a fierce light.

“Why me, Ben?” she asks.

“I couldn’t continue,” he says. “I couldn’t take being in the First Order anymore.”

Rey finds her heart throbbing so wildly, she can hear her pulse in her ears. There had been nights, as the Falcon cruised through the void, that she’d leaned back in the pilot seat and wondered…

To imagine him saying the words was one thing, but to hear it is something else entirely. She should be happy.

“Ben.” Her voice drops to a whisper.

He steps towards her, all earnestness, one hand reaching out. She’s been in this moment before—him reaching out, and her, feeling like she were at the edge of the cliff, and if she took a single step, she’d either fall or fly.

“It was because of you,” he says. “Do you understand? I want to go home now. With you.”

Rey raises her own hand, but it isn’t to take his. Her fingers settle on his cheek, tracing the lines of that old scar.

“Who’s doing this to you?” she asks.

His brow furrows. “Rey—“

“I know you,” she says. “This isn’t you. Who is making you say these things?”

For a second she thinks he’s about to argue, to plead. But something crosses over his face, like a ripple in still water. The placid brightness of his eyes cloud over, and he grabs her by the shoulders, fear and despair filling his face.

“It can hear you,” he hisses. 

She grabs him back, tugging at the lapel of his robe, trying to keep her own voice steady.

“Tell me what it is.”

His teeth gnash together and he shakes his head miserably. “It needs you. As a vessel.” 

“A what?”

“It can’t cross over the way it is. It needs to be born into this world.”

Rey shakes her head. “What the kriff does that mean?”

His eyes grow sharp. “Go. Now!”

He shoves her back, with the power of the Force behind it. She’s hurled back, towards the entrance, but she catches herself in midair, lands on her feet.

“Ben!” She reaches for her saber again. “I’m not leaving without you.”

The joy is all gone from him now. But he breaks into a grin. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with—you don’t want to know—“

He covers his face with slender fingers. He tries to turn away, but it’s as though something anchors his legs to the spot.

“Just go!” he yells. And then in a much smaller voice, adds, “Please.”

Rey’s grip on her saber tightens. But her decision had been made before she steered the Falcon towards Anroth. 

Before she can rush back to him, a voice she’s never heard before whispers into her ear.

“Sad, isn’t he? But—oh—so attached to you.”

She whirls around. Across the room, Kylo moans. 

The voice seems to come from inside her head. 

“He’s right, you know,” it whispers. “I do want you.”

Rey raises the ignited saber, but there is no target.

“Don’t worry,” it whispers. “He desires you. You desire him. And I desire a vessel. Shall we all get what we want?”

She briefly casts Kylo a look. 

“Don’t listen to it!” he yells. “Don’t—“ but something invisible seems to wrap around his throat. He collapses to his knees.

“Stop it!” Rey shuts her eyes, drawing on the well of the Force. Now—now she can feel it. It’s all around her, all around the room. It has its claws sunk deep into Kylo, and it’s trying to do the same to her.

“I don’t want to be your—” she shudders. “Your vessel. Or whatever.”

“Yes, you do,” the voice says, but it is softer this time, lighter. “I am what you have always wanted.”

She opens her eyes. 

Before her stands a child, in simple gray robes. There are freckles on his nose, and jet black hair that curls up at the tips. He has her nose, and his ears. Her heart swells, almost painfully, in her chest. It is as though she knows this child, has always known it.

“You always wished for a family,” the child says.

Rey is distantly aware of something vast and strong coiling around her, something that clouds her ears, so that Kylo’s cries disappear behind a haze—clouds her sight, so she can’t quite see that the child’s eyes are deep black pits.

The child is the most wonderful thing she’s ever seen.

It has such tiny hands. She can imagine wrapping her hand around the child’s tiny one, as they stroll together—where, it does not matter. Under blue skies, or in the shadow of great urban towers, or deep in subterranean walkways. Wherever the child wants to go, and it has the look of one who wishes to travel widely, bless its heart, they will go together.

It is odd, Rey briefly thinks, when she imagines where they’ll go, there is always destruction in their wake. Fallen star destroyers litter the fields. The twin suns burn over the ruins of cities. Those who do not die have gone mad, clutching at their heads, weeping blood. But it does not matter, because they will be together.

Her and it. And him. He will leave the First Order. He will stay by her side, as he was always meant to. His red saber will slice apart whoever stands in their way. They will protect each other, all three of them, and the child will never stand on a sand dune, staring up at the sky, screaming behind a departing ship. Never, Rey thinks, her hands closing into fists.

“You’ll never be alone again,” the child whispers.

The child steps towards her, puts its hand in hers. She doesn’t notice that the strength in its tiny hand couldn’t possibly belong to a child. 

“You can make it happen,” it says, insistently.

She finds no reason to argue. It is as though she’s walking through a dream when she approaches Kylo, who has fallen silent. Yes, she thinks, this _ is _ what she’s always wanted.

  


iv

It would be a lie to say she had never imagined this. But never quite like this.

He’s on the throne again, but this time, she’s standing before him, her knee up on the seat, beside his thigh, her leg between his. His fingers are finding the buckles of her vest, her belt. His breathing is hard.

She’d always dismissed her imaginings—he is not, or at least chooses not to be, Ben Solo. He chooses not to be the man with whom she whispered her most secret fears, back on Ahch-To. And all she knows of Kylo Ren is a shadow that terrorizes the galaxy, who has to be stopped.

But here—

Here, all that is set aside.

What were seeds within them both are left free to grow, to overrun. His hand once trembled to press against hers, in a vision shared through the Force, but here he shifts the folds of her robe aside and watches the subtle rise of her breasts when she inhales, and he puts his lips on her chest above her heart, before moving to the curve of flesh, the perk of a nipple.

Rey buries her hands in his hair, sighs, tries to wriggle her way out of her pants so she can take her place on his lap. He helps her with her belt, as though this were something they’d done a hundred times before.

When all resistance has disappeared, everything else comes easily enough.

She’s already soaking wet. While his hands follow the shape of her ass, she reaches past the band of his pants, finding him hard and hot. His fingertips press tight against her hips as she directs him into her. He utters a tense growl when he feels her wet cunt parting over the tip of his dick.

He looks up at her face, and her brows are furrowed, like she’s concentrating. She shifts—taking him in whole—gasps, pleasure coloring the edges of her cheeks. Her voice is just a little bit higher, whispering his name. It makes him press upwards, deeper.

“Kriff—” she mumbles.

The look on her face makes him drive up against her, in a slow, deliberate rhythm. She grasps at the hair at the back of his head, pulling down, turning his face up towards her, so he finds himself gazing at the way she grits her teeth when she pumps.

She’s getting tighter, the wet swell of her cunt driving him to the point of breaking. Every stroke brings him closer and closer, and he struggles to remain, balanced precariously in a moment that feels much too good. But she pounds down, and from between her thighs comes an abrupt, delicious tightness that squeezes across her waist, down her legs, at the same time he fills her with deep liquid heat that leaves them both quivering.

Somewhere out of sight, and for now, out of thought, the thing in the cave watches, smug that its plans are finally coming to fruition.

Bright with sweat, even while the cold winds continue to howl outside, they reach for one another. They reach out—past the press of flesh, the mixing of fluids. The creature in the cave is aware of movement in the air around them both—recognizes it as the Force, the Light and the Dark of it, pulling together as though of its own strange gravity. But, it ignores the motions. It is an ancient, frustrated thing. The movements of the Force are nothing to it. It makes the equivalent of blinking an eye, but when it does, Light and Dark touch. Rey opens her eyes, finds that Kylo—Ben already looking at her.

_ It is you, isn’t it? _

It’s the first time in days that he’s been entirely outside the influence of the thing in the cave.

_ Yes, _ he says. And then he remembers that in the mountain, on the throne, they are entwined together. _ ...Yes _, he mutters.

She leans into the embrace, without shame or fear. It feel different from the frantic desire that the thing had created in her.

_ It’s strange _ , she whispers. _ To find ourselves together like this. _

He reaches for her face, finds her cheek rests easily against his fingers.

_ This is not quite how I wanted us to be together, _ he says.

_ You can say that again, _ she smiles. _ But I came to this place to find you. And I did. _

The thing in the cave stirs, realizes something is wrong. Their minds have slipped from its grasp. They are communing with one another in a bubble of their own. They are not supposed to be doing that.

Rey and Ben realize they don’t have much time. There is a window to break from the thing’s grasp and flee.

She pitches forward, kisses him long and full.

It is as though they’re both rising quickly through deep waters, the pressure around them changing, lungs bursting—they break surface together, into icy air, their eyes clear.

The Force ebbs and flows through them both and bursts outward. It doesn’t harm the thing in the cave, but the light does burn, brief and bright, that it turns its face away.

In that moment, there is a scuffle of activity in the cave, and the patter of footsteps. When the light dims, the creature realizes they are gone.

Its rage could trigger the birth of a star, but while it is in the cave, it is not in the cave, not in this universe. Its scream is in the hollows of the mountain, and in the storm that rages outside. But in the minds of the two it had taken to be its pawns, there is a resolute tranquility and silence.

  


v

Rey is out in the field, in the middle of a mission, when she hears him approach. She’s out in the wild, among plains of rustling stalks, but it’s as though the wind had stopped blowing, and a fine dreamlike haze covers her senses. It’s not like what she felt in the cave, though. This is far subtler, though no less insistent.

This was what she felt on Ahch-To, and on Crait.

She is unsurprised to find him standing behind her, even if in truth, he’s lightyears away, in the Cynna system if intelligence reports are to be believed.

_ I never apologized _ , he says. _ For endangering you. _

She smirks. _ Like fighting you doesn’t do that already. _

That makes him scowl. _ You know what I mean. _

_ Do I? _

He doesn’t answer, but she knows that it will gnaw at him in the quiet of his sanctum. Deep in the mountain, he had told her he wanted to go home with her. It makes her sigh to remember it now. It was never going to be that easy. 

For now, she decides to dig a little deeper.

_ Regardless of what that thing was, it did show the truth. Your heart is filled with doubt. _

He doesn’t miss a beat. _ And yours with yearning. _

That packs more of a punch than she would have thought. But she sees no reason to lie.

_ Yes, it is. _

He pauses. _ Are you...? _

Rey automatically lays a hand on her womb, something she’d compulsively been doing quite a lot over the last few days, since they’d gotten off that Moon.

_ No, _ she finally says. _ I checked. I’m not pregnant. _

The compulsion hadn’t left, even after finding that out.

He exhales so forcefully, the mix of his feelings colors the Force around them. Relief, fear, affection. Just the smallest bit of disappointment.

_ It’s better that way, _ he finally says.

_ It is, _ she responds. _ We would have to be together. Or not at all. _

He gives her a look, as though at least some of the doubt has lifted. He nods his head.

_ I’ll see you soon, _ he says.

_ I’ll be waiting. _

  



End file.
